Subject Zero: Sam Collins
by FocusedOnMe
Summary: Sam Collins can turn invisible but can't hide from the british man and his goons. He can manipulate electrical impulses in his body to create force fields but can't protect everyone. He thinks he's the good guy but is anyone who kills someone really a good guy?
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

I heard my feet slapping against the wet asphalt and felt the shock of the impact run up my legs. They were burning and I wanted to fall down and give up. I felt that if I did, something very terrible would happen. Everything was pitch black and I couldn't actually see anything but a feeling of dread was crushing my chest and I felt the urge to scream. I turned down an ally and barely missed a homeless person laying on the ground. I stopped to catch my breath when I thought I was safe but heard footsteps approaching quickly from behind me. I swung around and thrust my hand out towards the steps, following some kind of instinct, and a translucent blue light filled the darkness between the steps and I. I saw a tall man with broad shoulders and a leather jacket running towards me. The light collided with the man and he fell backwards and cracked his bald head open. Blood poured out like paint on a white wall.

I heard more footsteps approaching and sprinted down the alley into Main Street. The streetlights lit up several men that had the same appearance as the first man at the end of the street. By this time I was out of breath and my throat felt like knives were being slid up and down my throat. I saw Merle's Hardware and Tonya's Hair Salon and the street that led down to my house. These men were efficient so I had no doubt in my mind that my family was either dead or would be soon. I ducked into the grocery store and crept down the aisles looking for somewhere to hide. After they gave me cybernetic implants to augment my powers and stole my DNA from me, After they tried to turn me into a mindless slave for them to control, I knew they wouldn't let me rebel and live so I ran.

The smartest thing would be to turn around and kill the rest of the men but they were being controlled and I already knew that they would keep coming after me. With my gifts being amplified it consumes more of my energy to create and maintain force fields or turn completely invisible. I came to the door and realized it was locked so I gathered my energy and push the energy from my body to manifest a force field push that broke down the door. I heard one of the men talking over a radio to a british man, " Subject Zero is running, we are pursuing but have lost all visual." The british man sighed and said " I don't care, you've been briefed about his ability, so use that brain of yours and find him." The man looked right at me and then ducked into the broken down back door and brush past me. I held my breath and expected to be found but the man just kept walking until I heard the door slam shut and heard him yell, "STOP!" The man saw the decoy I made from My force field and tried to tackle it. By the time he had realized his mistakes I was invisible again and running towards my home.

The door was locked but my frame is small enough that I could slide through the basement window and drop down onto the cold cement. I laid there for a few moments to catch my breath and pull myself together. The house looked the same as when I lived here a few years ago. _I'm only 22, a few years ago I was just a 15 year old Einstein and now I'm breaking down my own door and running from mad men. I graduated at 15 and defended my town against aliens with three other gifted kids and then met that terrible british man that ruined all our lives. Oh god, I don't even know if they're alive, I miss James._ The house was silent as I crept up the creaking wooden stairs. Those ugly paintings of Jesus playing sports were still hanging in the hallway signifying that the family I came from were white trash. They only adopted me so they could get my survivor benefits from social security. I still remember it like it was yesterday.

"Get back here, you bitch!" My step father said as my Mother scrambled up the stairs, with blood running down her arms. The bastard had a knife in his hand and rage in his eyes. She threw her foot out and landed a kick on his chest which threw him down the stairs. The knife slid across the tile of the entry way and my mother lunged for it. She stood over him and said, "This is the last time you hurt me or my child!" The knife plunged into his chest and blood soaked through his shirt and stained my mothers hands. The police arrived after I called them and tried to get my catatonic mother to speak to them. They sat with her for 15 minutes but it seemed like an eternity for a 6 year old. The police officer wrapped a blanket around my shoulders, his name badge read "Willis", and asked me if I understood what happened. I didn't, of course, and blamed my Mother for everything I felt. I even blamed her for her own death. She went out one cold morning in August (The death was in June and she was currently in meetings with her lawyer for the trial) and loaded some stones into the pockets of her Sunday dress and waded into the creek a few streets from our house in Mississippi. The neighbors came to check on me after a whole week and found a starving child that didn't even look at me.

The police officer that came to pick me up was Officer Willis and he had his son with him. "Hi, I'm James, What's your name?" I didn't even answer, my teachers now had another thing to list on my long list of "problems". They were still trying tests to figure out if I was autistic or if I just hated people. Now they said, I was a zombie and a hopeless case. James was my only friend until he introduced me to Kane Montgomery when I was 12. I had been living with James and his father and mother since my Mother's death and hadn't left the house since then. Everyone in town talked about me and I saw their side long glances. I didn't care though, I had started to punish myself for the way I had driven my Mother to suicide. When I was 13, and in advanced placement classes in the local High School, I finally began to forgive myself and let people close to me. My teachers no longer worried about my socializing skills because I had made a few friends that I related to. There was James, Kane, Gigi, and Cylvia. James and Gigi were together, Gigi was the pretty one who always looked her best and sometimes came off as a little bit of a bitch. She had an overbearing mother who always put her in beauty pageants the G didn't want to do and eventually was the reason she had a short stint in rehab for Bullemia and Prescription drug addiction.

Kane was the only diversity in our small town, being the only black kid in our school, and he was also my first crush and my first boyfriend. Of course we had to sneak around because it was unnacceptable for two boys to love eachother in our town. He was the most beautiful person I had ever seen and his eyes were warm and hard to everyone else but gentle to me. He pretended to be tough but I saw his soft side and we had both cried to each other. He had broad shoulders and thick biceps. His hair was brown and curly and felt like silk. He was the quarter back of the football team and also ran everyday through the woods. Cylvia was quiet and her family owned the only Chinese food restaurant in town. She didn't understand Chinese but her parents always spoke about it when they didn't want her to hear.

The Willis' residence was still all put together, nice and neat, the way that Linda liked it. I climbed the stairs to my room and stopped at the top. I heard breathing and felt my skin tingle as my atoms made my skin become translucent. Linda and her husband were sleeping in their bed and James picture was still on the bedside table. He had gone missing the same time that I had. They were still looking for him and me and Kane and Gigi and Cylvia. The more I thought about it, the more I felt helpless, The more I felt like crying. The rain was pounding on my window and my bed still had the Paris bedspread on it, I'd always wanted to go there, and My drawers were open. The contents were strewn around on the floor and someone had taken my notebook that listed all the places I wanted to go if I ever got away. They didn't seriously think that I would remain naive and young, did they? Those were adolescent dreams.

The air stirred and I heard someone walking towards me from the corner of my room. I turned and almost screamed, I thought I was seeing a ghost.

"James?"


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2 - I Don't Dream Anymore

Everything felt cold and hostile in this small cell they had thrown me in. My body was numb from the anaesthetic that the doctors had given to me before the procedure. I knew that I would feel the pain again, like I did everynight, and I considered creating a force field in my own head. They had forced me to do it to a red haired man named Ralph, I was only 16 at the time and thought that they wanted to save the world, so I made a man's head literally explode. I was never a big art enthusiast but I knew what a Pollack painting was and this man's head was the paintbrush. I remember that they had to force feed me for a month and I slept for 14 hours each day. The world seemed bleak and dull, my eyes only saw grey and my ears only heard the screams of my victim, but eventually they needed me again.

It was a humid day with a cloud filled sky when the british man spoke to me from outside my cell.

"Aren't you ready to rejoin the world that you wanted to save so bad?" His raspy accent filled my head and made me want to listen. "Yes…" I heard myself whimper this, like some kind of dog begging for a treat. He chuckled and the sound was hollow but still managed to make me want to scream. "What do you people want from me?" The voice that spoke was mine, high pitched and sounding like a young child about to cry. "Oh, I thought you were the genius and Kane was the jock. Tsk, tsk, tsk… wouldn't someone with a photographic memory remember the contract they signed." I felt his eyes on me and I wanted to meet them until I realized that he had mentioned Kane, "You said only James and I signed on with you… What have you done with Kane." He cupped his ear as another scream coming from deep within the dark complex rang out and smiled at me, " I thought you, of all people, would recognize that sound… I heard you always knew how to make him scream." He gave me another hollow chuckle and walked out.

When he left, two guards came to replace him and told me I was going on a trip. They opened the cell and I gathered up all the strength I had to lift myself up. They took me to a jeep and when I crawled in, everything became still and in an instant I felt a sharp pain in my head and the world faded away. When I opened my eyes I was in the desert and felt the hot air blowing gently on my face. We were stopped at a small hut in the middle of nowhere. There was even a tumbleweed bouncing around the little yard. Brown hair and brown eyes, Small frame, wide jaw, beer belly.

The blonde guard jumped out and said "Hey, Mr. Santos wants his package now." The little man grew panicked and started shouting in Spanish, the only words I recognized were Santos and Dios (God) and Diablo (Devil). He began to pray and made the motion of a cross with the rosary around his neck. I used to believe in God, now I'm not so sure what I believe. His kind and worried eyes turned to me and he pointed at me and yelled "Diablo". The guards came over and told me it was my turn to ask him, I knew what that meant and decided then at 19 that I wouldn't be the victim anymore, and jumped down from the jeep. The men turned to see a wall of blue slam into them, breaking blondies back and snapping the others neck, and I walked up to the man and tried to remember what little spanish I knew,

I asked him what the package was and he started yelling about God again so I spoke in a calmer voice and told him I wouldn't hurt him. I was gonna hurt Mr. Santos.

Present Day

James took a step towards me and I backed up but fell on a shoe lying on the floor. The floor was still wood it seemed. He put his hands out and I tried to look in his eyes, but the tears in mine were making it impossible to see, so I choked out two words. "You died!" Suddenly, I felt like someone was loading bricks onto my shoulders and crushing my lungs. "I saw them kill you…. I saw him make that man pull the trigger… I saw him tell you to break Kane's neck...I….I saw you kill Kane! You bastard, you killed Kane!" At this point I was screaming and our parents turned their light on, "Look what you've done!" James hissed and grabbed my arm, pulling me into the closet. He was using his strength and my arm felt like it was breaking so I started to whimper which made him clamp his hand down on my mouth. He whispered, "Mr. Santos wants his favorite pet back and getting what he want is what I do, even if I have to break something." I felt the pressure dissapear and felt a rush of wind in the closed space. I didn't see how he got it but that was an issue for another time.

Eventually I heard Linda say, "It's Just the wind let's go to bed, honey."

I moved to the window and shimmied the window pane open an inch before it wouldn't budge. I sighed and tensed my body up, using my force field to push the window up. If I was fast, I could get the flashdrive before them, but I could already see his men running into the forest and knew it was gone. My bruised body slammed into the ground and the impact made me wanna swear which I never do unless I'm really upset. I picked myself up from the ground and nearly face planted when I put weight on my leg. I fell to my knees and felt the itch of the grass and mud eating at my skin. The flashdrive was under the tree where I had buried that bird our cat had killed in the summer. I crawled through the mud and lay with my face against the ground for a moment before I pulled myself onto my knees to dig. My fingers clawed the mud and grass in frantic, jerky motions until I touched something cold and hard. _Of course, everything feels cold when you're crawling around in the rain_ , I thought to myself, _God please help me, I know I haven't been very faithful but I need you._ I tore the metal box out of the ground and forced my numb fingers to grasp the lock and pull it up to reveal the pink flashdrive I had buried on the first I had returned here after escaping for the first time.

The car hummed as I sped to Washington, D.C. A billboard advertising mattresses read, "How Do _YOU_ Sleep At Night?"

"I don't dream anymore." I whispered.


End file.
